Transcript:

this year's exhibition is called car loggerfeld a line of beauty and it's a
celebration of Carl's extraordinary career his career spans 65 years Carl would
often say he was four people that he was one person at Chanel one person at Fendi
one person that is only able and one person at Chloe and to an extent that's true
Fendi you know it was more of his modernist Tendencies Chloe he's more
romantic that Carl Lagerfeld is more minimalist and I suppose that Chanel more of
his historic system post-modernist sensibilities so to an extent you know that was
true but I think that themes transcended all of those houses what was remark about
Carl was that he was able to navigate all these different houses sometimes
simultaneously to create relatively distinct Aesthetics with those particular Brands
so he was the ultimate chameleon we met at one of his parties that he would throw
in his sort of 18th Century House in Paris he would throw these enormous fashion
parties and the great and good and everybody in the bad all came and it was
fantastic and I met him there and then I went on meeting him and in 96 I started
working at Chanel the very first time I met Carl was in 2004 actually he was
extraordinary I think what struck me the most was obviously his intelligence and
his knowledge but also how confident he was When I First Met Gala well I was
doing a student job and I was 15 years old and the I didn't know who he was at all
yeah my role at the beginning with Carl was only like to be like a bodyguard but
with the time you know I he became more like a like of course I was his private
secretary I would say in his personal assistant I think actually working and being a
friend of Carl there wasn't really a difference Carl loved his work that was his life
he gave everything to work and that was his happy place and there was no Division
and no holidays he made working the most glorious inspiring revelatory time ] I
guess we have these three here able to keep everything in place] so one thing that I
noticed with with Carl's work is that across the different brands across the different
time periods there was a fairly strong shoulder there was also a really kind of
angular line along the tailored jackets from the shoulder into the kind of chest area
and the finishes it's been a treat to see everything on the inside and something that
many people don't get to see we wanted to focus more on Carl the designer so less
his words and more his his works and we honed in on his creative process and
particularly his sketching so the drawing was a sort of a
(04:03) mix between a technical drawing and an expressionistic fashion
illustration for me you know God was like a genius he was drawing like crazy you
know like like a machine it can start to make like 20 dresses like in in two three
hours you know yeah we said he was part of the working class meaning that he
worked all day and all night and I didn't know how he achieved what he did it was
just extraordinary so that was the biggest challenge was trying to do him Justice do
a man of such extraordinary productivity Justice
(04:39) Colton he loved most of all was to work and that meant to sketch
and to fit the sketches were almost like love letters they had the secret language
this private language that any of the premieres could decipher and then translate
and decode into a garment so it's so nice to have Carl's very first design
represented in the exhibition just as a twirl the nevertheless is very accurate
rendition of what his first design was so I think that's also very moving at the time
we also found a letter that Carl wrote to
(05:13) his mother just after he won the Walmart prize he left the prize came
back home on his own had supper at eight o'clock and wrote this eight-page letter
to his mother that was really moving and talking about his experience and the joy
and and the pride that he had winning the the prize but he also also hear his
personality and his humor in his wit that became so much associated with Carl well
I wish I was there with Carl and his mother looking at the river Elba in Hamburg
when she said to him you know there is the gateway to other worlds I
(05:48) mean you should go and I think Carl always uh you know from the
very moment he saw that 18th century painting with Frederick and Voltaire um as
a literally as a child which he kept all his life he had a yearning to be in Paris I will
say like it's uh my Village the seventh near to the existence is the the the place then
I was the most during like 20 years because we were doing so many things in like a
circle of like two kilometers or one kilometers I will say well Carl really loved I
mean he loved Paris and he loved
(06:36) Paris in June because he said the air was like Silk and he used to
love just strolling a Flannery through Paris through Sunshine for his favorite place
that he would always gravitate to would be the cafe floor let's go to the floor we
were like coming here like not every day but like four four five days a week car
was coming here since the 16th and there's one particular silhouette that he would
return to again and again and again which we call the um schlimarian silhouette
which is based after um Oscar Schlemmer the Bauhaus
(07:12) artist which was a very very broad shoulder and nipped in waist and
and wider hips and it's something you see across all of the different design houses
and I think the areas of the body that he that he was obsessed with with the
shoulders and also the just the top of the rib cage he always wanted to make it as
narrow as possible I think that was partly to do with youthfulness I think you felt
that having this very narrow ribcage gave him a sort of sense of youthfulness
[Music] it's the one of the wedding dresses
(07:44) selected for the exhibition [Music] and I just want to check that we
have the new underscore prepared I don't know if Carl intended to create a sort of
Cipher of himself I mean he often was delighted at this cartoon of himself or this
dolly that he had constructed by virtue of what he wore and his powdered white
hair in the ponytail the dark glasses thank you Carl became this sort of Icon he
became a sort of rock star and he developed this sort of look that he called the
dolly or the puppet and the ossify it
(08:45) around the early 2000s which was you know the black and white
uniform that he created with the high collar and the cravat and the Chrome Hearts
jewelry and I think people very much sort of see that side of call and they think
that's Carl and for me that was just a sort of Disguise you know it was it was a way
of allowing him in a way to pass incognito on the world stage [Music] so these
dualities that I think have share this sort of contradictory sides of Carl masculine
feminine romantic military historical futuristic so I hope
 (09:21) that when people walk through the exhibition and they see these
dualities and these contradictions they get a better sense of Carl who he really was
as opposed to the image and the myth of Carl but I think Carl was extraordinary
you know he was three things he was a total designer um so he you know made
Furs he made dresses he made suits he made handbags he made shoes he did
makeup you know he was somebody who did interiors and photography he wrote
books he directed plays but I think ultimately you know what Carl's Legacy will be
is this sort
(09:50) of fashion designer impresario who was able to marriage art and
business which is really become the sort of model for contemporary fashion in he
always wants to be relevant and he never wanted to look back I I think he did look
back I think he was actually deeply nostalgic and I think he he looked back but he
would never miss it I think that what also what kept him so relevant was his
curiosity his intelligence but also his sort of open-mindedness he would take
inspiration from anywhere from a green sweater in the street or
(10:28) you know from art or from film or from literature so he didn't have
any he wasn't a snob well he was a snob he was a democratic snob what made Carl
unique was his enormous knowledge and his joy in absolutely dancing with every
historical and cultural reference making extraordinary and original and unique
combinations I know it was such a radical transformation of the classic Chanel suit
with the mini mini skating she's not always hating the knees this year we were
fortunate to work with taduando the architect who designed the
(11:07) exhibition Taro and Carl were great friends had a lot of respect and
admiration for each other and and had it actually designed a house for a car that
never got built so I think it's just so poetic that um he can now live in a house that
that tattoo built [Music] foreign [Music]